“Ah, music,” he said, wiping his eyes. “A magic beyond all we do here!”— Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

It was a steamy August afternoon, they had a couple of gigs coming up, and music therapist Victoria McNeill was putting the Glee Club, a Montreal choir and performance group that meets weekly to make music together, through its paces.

They warmed up with breathing and voice exercises, then started to rehearse the upbeat tunes they’d learned with McNeill — songs like Blue Moon and Summertime, like Consider Yourself, I’m a Believer and These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.

And when they got to Cecilia, a 46-year-old Simon and Garfunkel tune with a wildly infectious rhythm, they spontaneously began to dance — with one another or on their own, in an impromptu show of energy and joy.

“I think music fills people’s hearts,” said Marcie Klein, manager of mental health support services at Ometz. “Music makes people happy. And when I have been to listen to them rehearse, I hear laughter and singing and people coming together. … It helps to distract you from the symptoms of your illness and allows people to share a good time.” She is trying to find funding for the program to continue.

Heidi Bolton is one of the Glee Club members. “I like music and I like singing,” she said. “When you’re singing, you feel as if you are in a different world. … You are in the moment. You are in such a happy mood that nothing really bothers you.”

Roslyn Rabinovitch, Jerald Gould, centre, and Gerard Friedman rehearse a number at the Cummings Centre in August. The trio are members of the Glee Club, a choir made up of about a dozen people who have mental health issues.John Kenney /
Montreal Gazette

Music is a tool that has been shown to help promote everything from self-esteem and well-being to communication, self-confidence and creative potential in populations ranging from people with mental illnesses and developmental disabilities to those who have suffered strokes or have dementia.

“Music has a special magic,” said Shelley Snow, a music therapist at Concordia University’s Centre for the Arts in Human Development. The centre recently celebrated two decades of remarkable work in creative arts therapies — music therapy as well as art, drama and dance therapy — and their therapeutic potential in adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities. Over the years, the centre has staged 11 plays in which these adults have performed, with the three most recent taking the form of ethnodramas — plays based on the actual life experiences of the performers.

“Music sounds the way feelings feel,” said Snow, citing a phrase coined by American philosopher Susanne Langer. “This helps explain the power of music to move people so deeply and strongly.”

Snow has composed more than 100 songs for the productions as the centre’s music therapist. She has also used music in her work with people with dementia, people in psychiatric hospitals and at-risk youth, among others.

“Music instantly bonds people. If you are isolated, if you are alone, if you are depressed, and you come together with a group of people singing, music works on many different levels.”

The very act of singing itself has physiological benefits. “It stimulates the nervous system; it has been shown that it can improve mood and decrease anxiety,” Snow said.

For people with mental health issues, “not only do they respond to the music, but also to being connected with others,” said Klein of Ometz. “They are looking for connection and community and to feel good about themselves. … Many have struggled with loss of employment and loss of family, and through this group and other groups, they have developed a sense of community.

“With every performance they are invited to do, their self-esteem grows; they share their love of song and become more cohesive with every performance. Not only is their self-confidence boosted, but they make social connections. And they build a structure into their schedule.”

Music therapist Victoria McNeill, centre, has a laugh with Glee Club members Jerald Gould and Esther Ross. âIt is uplifting and empowering to sing for your peers,â says McNeill. âFor some choristers, I think it has been really transformative.âJohn Kenney /
Montreal Gazette

The group meets weekly to rehearse, and every few months performs at community gatherings or other events. In June, the Glee Club performed at the Ometz annual general meeting, “which was a big thing for them,” Klein said. There was applause and there were more than a few tears, particularly when they sang What a Wonderful World, a song made famous by Louis Armstrong. “They really felt that they were an important part of the meeting. And they were.”

Much is at play for members of the Glee Club, said music therapist McNeill. “It is uplifting and empowering to sing for your peers. … For some choristers, I think it has been really transformative. One member talked about how she really didn’t think she had a voice as a singer; now she is learning to use that voice — as a singer and also to speak up and ask for what she needs when she needs it.”

Singing together in the Glee Club and giving performances as they do, “we share joy among ourselves and also a degree of empowerment,” McNeill said. “We want to be involved in a process meaningful to us and to an audience.”

And another thing: People with mental health issues are acutely aware of how they are perceived by the public, she said. “Mental health is a hot-button term … and we hope we are also helping to reduce stigma around mental illness.”

Beyond the therapeutic benefits of singing, “choirs are complicated,” McNeill said. “I sing in one now. Everybody kind of lays themselves on the line. You have to make music. It is a very levelling experience — where you’re coming from is not so much an issue. It all speaks to the power of the creative process.”

McNeill, 30, has a master’s in orchestral French horn performance, and she taught at the university level and performed professionally before returning to school and earning a graduate certificate in music therapy at Concordia. She did hands-on fieldwork in geriatrics and with children on the autism spectrum.

As a certified music therapist, she works with groups in addition to the Glee Club; at the Cummings Centre, for instance, she works with people who have had strokes.

“Especially for people with left-brain strokes, when the speech centre is impacted, we see people who can’t put together a sentence to say ‘How are you?’ but can sing the words to Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

“Music has the potential to harness those pathways — and we have techniques to help people transition from the singing of familiar songs to singing words and maybe to language again.”

McNeill also works with people at Cummings who have Alzheimer’s disease. “There, we focus on making music and on positive reminiscences,” she said.

She draws on music they listened to when they were young. “There is something about hearing music you may have listened to at a dance in formative years,” McNeill said.

“We can reconnect to some part of ourselves. It’s the way our brains process information: the brain is stimulated through music. Processes that have slowed might be facilitated.”

At the Maimonides Geriatric Centre in Côte-St-Luc, therapeutic recreation specialist Kim Weippert has created personalized playlists on iPods for a small group of residents with dementia.

She spoke to family members in a bid to come up with music their relatives might have listened to between the ages of 12 and 28. If they didn’t know what that was, she would research the residents’ backgrounds herself and then test the music on residents and look for reactions — a smile, say, or signs that they were less agitated. Based on their reactions, she created a playlist.

So far, 38 residents at Maimonides have iPods with personalized playlists, and more are being developed with other residents. The effect is therapeutic, Weippert said: music has been shown in research to reduce reliance on medication to treat depression, anxiety and psychosis.

“And this intervention has seen people who were completely lethargic open their eyes and tap their hands; it has seen them mouth the words to a song,” she said. “The melody connects with a meaningful memory.”

Shelley and Stephen Snow (pictured at their Dorval home) help students with productions at Concordia’s Centre for the Arts in Human Development. In the centre’s most recent shows, participants have told their own stories. âWe wanted to understand what our clientsâ lives were like, from their own perspective,â says Stephen.John Mahoney /
Montreal Gazette

Concordia centre encourages participants to share their dreams

June was a big month for the Centre for the Arts in Human Development at Concordia University: it celebrated the 20th anniversary of its productions with A Night at the Oscar, at Oscar Peterson Concert Hall, featuring filmed segments of previous plays and live performances. The evening was an impressive display of showmanship, singing, dancing and more.

And one of the centre’s co-founders, Stephen Snow — a professor of drama therapy in Concordia’s department of creative arts therapies, co-director of research at the centre and director of the productions — became the first recipient of the Ella Amir Award for Innovations in Mental Health, at the annual general meeting of AMI-Québec Action on Mental Illness. Named for AMI-Québec’s executive director, the award recognizes individuals or organizations for building awareness of mental health issues in the community.

The centre, unique in Canada, accepts 20 adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities every second year as students in a three-year program in which two years of music therapy, art therapy, dance therapy and drama therapy are provided. The plays take place after their second year.

The centre’s mandate also includes training 10 to 12 graduate students each year in the fields of these therapies, research and educating the public about the capabilities of the performers.

But the centre’s beginnings were humble, said Lenore Vosberg, who co-founded it 22 years ago “from nothing” with Concordia professors Snow and Miranda D’Amico of the department of education. A social worker at the West Montreal Readaptation Centre in Lachine, Vosberg wanted to raise money to stage a play for clients of that centre, who are adults with developmental disabilities.

Snow, who was teaching in Concordia’s undergraduate theatre program and running a course in drama for special populations, suggested that she try to recruit 15 people who could benefit from expressing themselves. “He said, ‘Give me some time and I will see if I can create a play.’ ”

She recalled suggesting the story of Aladdin. ” ‘They don’t need a genie,’ I said. ‘They should believe in themselves.’

“Stephen agreed to direct the play if I produced it,” Vosberg recalled. “Most people don’t know what a producer does: I had to raise the money. They thought they would use the original Disney music, but Disney said no — and so we found out the story of Aladdin was in the public domain.”

Snow’s students started to work with the group. “Shortly after it started, I said, ‘We could document this,’ ” Vosberg remembered. “I could see changes, from week to week. The students grew in confidence; they were friendlier, and stimulated by being at the university.”

As Snow explained: “Everything we do is within a therapeutic context. The paradigm is the creative arts therapies. The drama therapist becomes the director; the movement therapist becomes the choreographer; the music therapist becomes the music director; and the art therapist helps to create the scenery.”

Warren Lumsden was one of the performers in the Centre for the Arts in Human Development’s June anniversary show A Night at the Oscar.Chad Rabkin

Shelley Snow — a music therapist and, it happens, Stephen Snow’s wife — became music director, composer and musician for the productions. For Aladdin, she wrote 16 songs with lyricist Roger Jay.

In 1996, the program received an academic innovations grant.

Today, Vosberg is the centre’s director of clinical services and public outreach; she divides her time between Concordia and the West Montreal Readaptation Centre.

Eleven shows have been staged so far. The earlier ones were based on established productions, such as Alice and Pinocchio. The three shows staged since 2006 have been ethnodramas, in which participants tell their own stories, drawn from their own experiences.

“We wanted to know, ‘Tell us about your lives,’ ” said Stephen. “We really did shift into something where their individual dreams, desires, feelings came through much more.”

The first ethnodrama, for instance, dealt with the intensity of the stigma experienced by the people in the group. “They would share stories of being on the métro and people making fun of them,” he said. “We wanted to understand what our clients’ lives were like, from their own perspective.”

The therapists at the centre work with clients outside the boundaries of a therapy room, but the public performance is, in effect, therapy.

One year, a client “had a desperate desire to express herself” and wanted a starring role in the production, recalled Shelley. “She wanted her family to see her. This was really important to her. … We worked to be able to give that to her; I listened to her stories and desires and needs, and together we put them into a song.”

The woman was able to learn the song and perform it, and was proud of herself for her accomplishment.

“So many people have issues around self-esteem and self-confidence,” said Stephen. “For our group, the audience is the mirror of their concept of society, so they are going up there often with a sense of stigma — and when they have reflected back to them, in a very authentic and positive way, a really warm reception of their performance, it is so beautifully enhancing for them.”

If audience response serves as affirmation and validation for the performers, the performers have a role, too — in moving the audience “to another place, where they can view the people on stage in perhaps a different way,” Shelley said.

The centre’s theme song, written by Shelley for an early production, with lyrics by Jay, was initially called I Can! — but at the June performance, participants sang it as “We Can!”

The song begins: “When somebody says you’re hopeless / And that you do not belong / That’s the moment to ignore them / You can prove them wrong / Just sing this song.”

The chorus is: “We can! / We always knew we could / We may not be so good at first / But yes we can.”

“It’s an important song, in terms of empowerment,” said Shelley, who uses it in music therapy, to work on such areas as assertiveness and stigma issues. “They are asserting their right to succeed.”

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